A Perfect Planet review: Attenborough’s new show is one of his best
Silverback Films
A Perfect Planet
BBC 1
From 3 January 2021
Cryogenic frogs and blood-sucking finches are among the many remarkable animals to star in David Attenborough’s latest series, A Perfect Planet, which examines what made Earth so perfect for life. How was it that everything about the planet – including its size, spin and tilt, distance from the sun and even its moon – was perfectly suited to hosting and nurture life? So much so that it is (probably) the only planet to host life.
Working with the team that created Netflix’s Our Planet, the new five-part series A Perfect Planet looks at the most influential natural forces, including sunlight and ocean currents, that create the ideal conditions to create and support life. It also shares some fascinating stories about the animals that benefit from them.
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From the remote volcanic islands of the Galapagos to the clear blue waters of tropical atolls, and from the sand dunes of the Sahara to the frozen world of the Arctic, A Perfect Planet pushes the boundaries of film-making to capture previously unseen images.
The series starts with one of the most important of those nurturing/creative forces: volcanoes. They created land, brought carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and, as Attenborough reminds us, life wouldn’t have started without them.
Opening shots feature colourful footage of flamingos nesting around the corrosive waters that surround an active volcano in Tanzania. A memorable yet haunting scene show flocks of chicks, unable to fly, trying to avoid predation from marabou storks as they trek across the muddy plains to meet their parents in the freshwater springs where they hunt for food.
The most fascinating stories come from the Galapagos. There’s a pregnant iguana making a perilous descent into a crater to lay eggs in the hot ash where they can incubate. Then there are the vampire finches, one of the world’s most recently discovered species, which feast on the blood of seabirds that use the island as a pit stop, and are accustomed to this behaviour – which may have its origins in some sort of symbiotic pact.
Unseen wonders
The episode moves on to Yellowstone National Park, where we see the almost cartoonish attempts of a coyote stealing fish from river otters, and then to the Serengeti with the usual chase between predator and prey, in this case hyenas and wildebeest.
Starting with one of the most fascinating scenes of the series, the second episode, which focuses on the power of the sun, looks inside the world of figs in the tropical rainforest. We see the slightly disturbing and complex relationship between the fruit and the fig wasps, some of which die inside a fig, while others die after they emerge from it.
Sun also brings the warmth of spring, even to the Arctic circle, where wood frogs “defrost”: after lying apparently frozen in the ice during the winter, a frog’s blood is warmed by the sun, and it awakens, ready to spring into action.
In the intense heat of the Sahara desert, we see how one of the fastest animals in the world, the silver ant, avoids boiling from sun in search of food, and in China, hungry golden snub-nosed monkeys fight for food to survive the winter. It also shows the stunning transformation of forests as they turn from emerald green to gold during autumn.
The final scene is a real highlight as shearwaters from New Zealand prepare to make a 16,000-kilometre flight across the Pacific Ocean to follow the sun north to Alaska, as they chase summer around the globe. These warm waters allow plankton to thrive, making a welcome meal for millions of hungry shearwaters and the humpback whales that have also travelled afar to follow the warmth.
Perhaps the series’ most dramatic scenes are in the episode on the weather, which restates the message we can’t hear too often: that climate change is disturbing the stable weather patterns animals rely on. Baby giant river turtles are drowning in the Amazon because the rainy season now comes too early, and the dry seasons are too dry. Bee-eaters that nest in the banks of rivers in Zambia now face seeing their nests collapse as the heat intensifies and dries them out, while many animals struggle to find water. Even in the Gobi desert, where snow can be found, wild camels must make long journeys in search of this source of water.
A Perfect Planet is a great blend of natural history and earth science, making it one of Attenborough’s best projects. This unique experience is sure to make us think more about how natural forces have shaped the planet to allow life to flourish and to make us question the scale of human impact on it.
Article amended on 15 January 2021
We have corrected the image caption.
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